Bank Holiday Blues

It's Spring Bank Holiday, and I'm feeling the familiar ambivalence. Bank Holidays have always vexed me. When we were kids they were often days of house arrest. Living in a holiday resort, there was a culture of knowing superiority perpetuated by the grown-ups, mainly my mother, who would insist that only a fool would venture out when the town was invaded by hoi polloi. We were encouraged to pity these sad folk arriving by the coachload, whatever the weather, with their delusions of enjoying a day at the seaside. Our superior alternative, in those days when we didn't have a car, when bank holidays were holidays for everyone and there were no shops open, was to stay 'around the doors'. We'd watch Charlie Chaplin or Mack Sennett compilations which were on TV in the morning (daytime TV was bank holiday only, and seemed to be limited to the silent movie era) and then kick a football against the side of the house. They were days spent in limbo, purposeless and unsatisfactory.

Even when we got our first car, a yellow Morris 1100, it didn't get any better. My parents would question whether it was worth going anywhere because everybody would be out on the roads, and who would want to be stuck in a traffic jam when they could have a nice relaxed time 'around the doors'.  If  we did venture out the spectres of the crowds, the traffic and the weather would be weighing us down with such foreboding that the little Morris, with its cargo of a family of 5 and a border collie, would become a pressure cooker on wheels. Throw into this mix my regular and spectacular car sickness and you can imagine the fun we had.

My life changed in so many ways when I met my wife. In one of those mad, serendipitous, new love moments we shared stories of our childhoods and it emerged that her family had been regular day trippers to Whitley Bay. Much to my mum's bemusement, on our first August bank holiday as a couple we went to the seafront to meet a large gathering of the extended family who were to become my inlaws. I remember I was grouchy as I struggled to cope with the demolition of the bank holiday pillar of family wisdom. People were having a good time. There were crowds, but that added to the atmosphere. There was a bit of a cold wind off the sea, but the sun was shining and the bite of coldness gave an added flavour and warmth to the chips that we ate. This was what I'd been missing for all those years. Bank holidays could be fun.

Of course now a bank holiday is a different proposition. Shops are open, there are leisure and entertainment options a-plenty, and public transport runs as normal. My mum is away on a coach trip. And yet I'm at home, writing this, wondering whether to take the dog for a walk, or to go to the garage for a loaf of bread. We've already jettisoned plans we'd made to go into town, and my family are all dozing. Looks like we're staying around the doors...